happy easter!
We had a GLORIOUS Easter weekend! We ate ham! We ate chocolate! We got a ton of work done! - which justifies the chocolate eating which may have been excessive. On Monday my aging body was loudly protesting the weekend’s activities, but I am writing this early Tuesday morning where I can walk both down and up the stairs without even a whimper.
On Saturday I worked on uncovering the barn windows which have been boarded up since the last time the barn was painted. It’s due for painting again, so it’s been a while. There’s no glass in any of the windows, so the people who installed the boards probably wanted the interior of the barn to stay dry or warm. That is a concern that we are definitely going to need to address, but at this moment we need it to be bright and airy. Has anyone ever seen a Barn Spider? I only saw one once in a friends’ photo. It covered the bottom of a 2 gallon pail! Since then, our barns have been some of the best lit in the countryside. In the fall, Chris put up plastic in the remaining windows to make the barn as comfortable for the animals as we could with the limited time we had. My before and after photos aren’t as dramatic as they should be because I took the plastic down first. I am not great at remembering to take photos for this blog, but I’m working on it!
Once the barn was bright and windy, I got started on installing a camera system so I can surveil the animals. Don’t worry, they signed something about how they should have no expectation of privacy. Most of their text messages are about me being an inadequate farmer, it’s very hurtful.
OK, really. Over the winter, our wonderful mail carrier rang the bell to tell me that I had a sheep in trouble (she is a sheep enthusiast herself). Our sweet Charlotte, named after our next door neighbor at The Old Farm, was cast! This is when an animal falls onto its back and can’t right itself. In the case of sheep, this is fatal in a short amount of time. I would have never seen her because the barn itself blocks the view of the barnyard from the house and she would have definitely died by evening chores, so I am very grateful. Charlotte’s rumen was full of air, her breathing was raspy, and she was too weak to stand by the time I got to her. I didn’t have a lot of hope, but I treated her like I would treat an animal with pasture bloat (even though I have never successfully saved one - eternal optimism is a good trait in a farmer). I drenched (gave orally with a big syringe) her with baking soda water and a molasses and vitamin supplement and sat with her a while, treating her intermittently. I had built a berm out of hay to help her stay upright (sternal is the more accurate word) and after a while she took a bite of the hay! I was like, “wait!? Are you going to survive?” I went inside for dry clothes and a cup of tea and when I went back out she had dragged herself on her weak back legs into the barn and she was hung up on the step. I couldn’t believe my eyes! Then I was able to get her into a smaller pen with separate hay and water so she could rest and get her strength back. It took a couple of days, but she is still with us, and this was a really long tangent to explain why we need barn and barnyard cameras. See below for a photo of Charlotte and her baby in early 2022, she has had those distinctive crinkly ears since she was born.
I put in 4 this weekend, the barnyard, the pen we just built, the next pen we are planning to build, and the chicken coop. There was a slight setback when one of the cameras fell on my head, which hurt more than you would think, but after that it was smooth sailing!
On Sunday I moved the manure spreader from its temporary location under the deck into the barn! When we moved in, our equipment had to find places other than the barn because the previous owners were still using the upper floor for storage. I thought this would be pretty straightforward, but it kind of turned into more work than I imagined. It was backed too far under the deck for me to get under with the ROPS (roll over protection system?) up on the tractor, so I had to fold that down which is kind of a process, especially if you forget how to do it each time. Then the jack on the spreader was seized so I took a 2x4 and levered it up to the same level as the hitch which obviously took several tries, first too high, then too low, etc. Eventually, I got it hitched up and backed into the barn. I thought backing it up the hill into the barn would be the most challenging part of the process, but it turned out it was a breeze! Something small like this can take literally hours and that is the fun (?) thing about having a farm.
After that, I got started moving the bed pack from the sheep patio. Even with the tractor, the hay weaves together like a mat and the bucket on the tractor tends to just roll it up until you work at it long enough to loosen it. Shortly after I started, Chris got home from work. In an easter miracle, the skidsteer started, so we both worked on the bed pack for pretty much the rest of the day. The reason my body was sore is because there is a point where you cannot use the tractor to get the rest of the material you are trying to move. Especially when you put your oil tank spit roaster and quad trailer in the way. At this point, you have to fork or shovel the rest into the tractor bucket.
I didn’t get a ‘before’ picture because, again, I’m bad at this, but I do have an ‘after’ photo! Rather than spreading it right away like we would have at The Old Farm, we are going to attempt to compost it using the windrow method. This is for a couple of reasons: We are using more shavings in our bedding than we have in the past. 1-Wood shavings are high in carbon, so can cause a nitrogen deficiency in the plants where you spread them. 2-The fields here are in nice shape for grazing and hay, so we don’t want to spread any weed seeds that are in the hay we brought from The Old Farm, and 3- We are planning a large garden/orchard, so lots of compost will be helpful!
I am really weirdly excited about the compost, I woke up Monday morning thinking that I needed to find the compost thermometer ASAP! We bought it for checking the temperature of big bales of hay. I looked everywhere and couldn't find it, but I did find the barn scale that I’ve been looking for for months. I just received a new one so in the natural order of the world the lost one turned up right after. I guess I may as well order a new compost thermometer…